WBC not high enough for chemo: What can I do to get them higher?

Posted by MommaCandy @mommacandy, Mar 8 7:22am

So i went in for second chemo appt and my white blood cell count wasn't high enough for me to get chemo...my question is...
is there anything i can do to get them higher? any foods i could be attempting to eat etc? my appetite has sucked...on the good news side my CA125 has dropped from 1536 to 804 after one chemo treatment so i guess thats a really good thing...on the other downside, i've lost pretty much all my hair šŸ™

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she actually was swearing the machines working against her as they took my temperature with four different machines and it varies from 99.8 to 101.7. the fever reached 102.7 last night here at home.so when reported foto oncologist said low grade

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well good news this morning, fever has broken completely, temp is back down to 98.2 about avg for me. I feel ok other than the pain which i am sure is simply due to the cancer because its the same painful feeling i had prior to the first chemo...i just want to say THANK YOU to all of you for caring...

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@mommacandy

well good news this morning, fever has broken completely, temp is back down to 98.2 about avg for me. I feel ok other than the pain which i am sure is simply due to the cancer because its the same painful feeling i had prior to the first chemo...i just want to say THANK YOU to all of you for caring...

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@mommacandy This is good news about your temperature returning to normal. I've been following your discussion and saw that @loribmt advised you to go to the hospital. When my father had chemotherapy for lymphoma that was the advice he was given too because of the possibility of an infection. That did happen to him one time and he went straight to Emergency and was admitted to the hospital.

When do you next see your oncologist? Will you talk with the oncologist about the fever and if it happens again what you should do?

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Lori is correct. Fever while getting chemo is a life-threatening condition. I am both a doctor and a chemo patient. I get my cancer care at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, a two-hour drive from where I live. I developed fever on a weekend, went to a local ER, and sat in the lobby 9 hours. Never saw a doctor. Then I told my husband, ā€œTake me to Mayo. We should have just gone there in the first place.ā€ We did. We arrived two hours later, and I saw a doctor within 10 minutes. I was immediately admitted for IV antibiotics, and spent 4 days in the hospital. I will never go to a local ER again. (Unless Iā€™m having chest pain or something that canā€™t wait two hours.)
You are four hours from your cancer treatment center, so this is even harder for you. But please consider having someone take you there if you think the wait in your local ER will be that long, AND you think you can make it. Call your oncologist about it. If unavailable, ask for the oncologist on call.
You mentioned speaking with an on-call doctor, who thought it was OK to wait until Monday. Was that an oncologist? An oncologist would have told you to get to the hospital immediately.
The high white count can be from Neulasta. The fever is not. Remember, fever in a chemo patient is a life-threatening condition.

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i see them on Wed, i called the oncall dr last night and they said if the fever had not broken overnight they would recommend going to local ER to which i told them that wouldn't happen and she as like well you can always come to ours but that if it had completely broken i would be fine to wait til i was due to come back in.. they really weren't' concerned at all really i guess because my gut/bladder is still working fine.....of course i have been in contact via mychart so if they want me to come in they'll let me know...she had me on hold a couple times last night while she was in contact with my oncology team..so I assume that would count as being from an oncologist.. the good thing is today other than the pain i'm back to normal... i've been able to eat, drink, etc and it stays down...no fever, no icky feeling, no nothing..

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